Last week, my lovely daughter had a brilliant idea. She invited me to see Taylor Swift’s RED concert here in Nashville at the Bridgestone arena. Even though I’m not a fan of “Pop Star Taylor”, I always liked her country songs from way back when she still had curly hair and wore cowboy boots. But since I love spending time with my daughter and since it was her treat, I said ‘yes’. There was one minor problem; my daughter didn’t have any tickets to the show.

But, you see, the girl is very resourceful and after scanning good old Craigslist for hours, she finally talked a seller down to $70 for two tickets. We sent him money through PayPal and waited at will call while the seller was on the phone with Ticketmaster to transfer the tickets into our names (or so he said).

Well, to make a long, sad story short, the tickets were never transferred into our names. After about 1 ½ hours of waiting, the lady at will call decided to let us know that someone else was already occupying “our” seats. Thanks, lady, you couldn’t have told us that sooner? By then the concert had already started. And through all this, the “seller” swore that he transferred the tickets to will call. He even told us he would refund the money if the transfer for some reason didn’t work.

We felt robbed; financially and emotionally. So what do you do when you hear 17,000 eight-year-olds scream from inside the arena because Taylor is about to perform “Red?” You are darn right, you get something to eat!

RED didn’t work out for us, but Mike’s Ice Cream on lower Broadway certainly did. We didn’t even care that we walked through pouring rain to get there. We were in desperate need of some rich, handmade ice cream.

We didn’t see Taylor but we managed to have a nice evening together after all. We weren’t even that upset anymore. Twenty years from now I probably would not have remembered the concert anyway, but I will always cherish the crazy, wonderful evening I had with my daughter, and the lessons learned from it.

1.Do not buy concert tickets on Craigslist.
2.Always bring an umbrella if the weather forecast calls for 80% chance of rain in Nashville.

FYI, we filed a dispute with PayPal who guaranteed us a full refund. Hooray for PayPal, even though you charge a ridiculous fee whenever I withdraw money for deposit in my bank account.